


Best Friends

by ReaderRose



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Background Alphyne - Freeform, Character Analysis, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Headcanon, Insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 11:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11966199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaderRose/pseuds/ReaderRose
Summary: Friendship is weird.





	1. Papyrus

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually just a write up for a headcanon prompt on Tumblr I did a few weeks ago. I thought it was interesting enough to post here, too.

Papyrus realizes he will likely never be anyone’s best friend, but that’s okay! As long as he’s the best friend he can be, it’s enough!

Papyrus has always had a lot of trouble making friends. He just always seems to say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, or mess up, or confuse people, or be too quiet, or be too loud, or too childish, too strange, too desperate, too opinionated, too wishy washy, too this, too that, and the one time he thought he had perfected the formula, the perfect pitch, the perfect blend of traits, the perfect Papyrus for friendship, he found he was too forgettable. Too boring. It was fine! It had just been an experiment, that time! He just didn’t quite figure it out!

He would think the whole process impossible, were it not for the fact that Sans manages just fine… and he doesn’t even try! Sans had said that was the trick, not trying, so Papyrus didn’t try and he still found little success. Sans had also said “just be yourself,” which didn’t make any sense, because he’d tried that the first few times and it hadn’t worked at all!

But he’d also explained that if Papyrus made a friend while he wasn’t being himself, he would risk losing the friend if he ever became himself again. And that made some strange kind of sense. He did like being himself a plurality of the time. It would be a shame to give that up.

So he decided to simply be himself, and try less…  and join the Royal Guard, because they were popular, and he would be popular, and then he would have friends almost instantly! Sans had not seemed to have much faith in the plan when he told him it, but it was completely logical.

If you’re feeling lonely or down, or blue…  _join the armed forces!_  He thinks he read that in a poster in the dump, once. It’s something different, at least.

Still, Papyrus knows very well how difficult becoming friends is. Who knows how much worse the competition and bloodsport(?) would be to become best friends!? He can’t imagine. He would be happy even being worst friends as long as he could be  ** _A_**  friend! Though he would hope his friends would be kind enough to only call him that behind his back. Out of hearing range entirely, if he was lucky!

 

(And of course, any friends he makes are automatically his best friend. It would always be a tie because simply being his friend would make them the very best!)

 


	2. Undyne

 

 

It's almost scary how quickly Papyrus went from being the nuisance outside her door at 1 in the morning to being her best friend. It's weird, and he's weird, and the whole situation is weird, honestly, but she isn’t about to jinx it by questioning it. Life has handed her a Papyrus, so she’s made a friend out of it. He _wants_ her to make a soldier out of him, but nevermind.

This is so much better. For both of them.

It’s tough for her when it comes to friendships, sometimes. She has friends, like Gerson and Asgore, but they’re so much older than her, and it makes things kind of weird when all she wants to do is throw things and rant about stuff. They always pull out the “when I was young” stuff, or the Wise Eyes Of Knowing And Experience when all she wants to do is trash talk about obnoxious robots or paperwork. It’s awkward. They’re great, but they’re old enough to be her fathers. Her great grand fathers. A lot of great, actually. It’s downright weird to think about how many greats are actually in play. So she doesn’t. She just huffs and drinks her tea and calls up Papyrus to ask if he wants to punch each other for a few hours, and he always picks up, and he always is interested in punching and being punched, and it’s a really good system. Great guy, that Papyrus.

But it’s not just Asgore and Gerson. She’s friendly with most of her subordinates off-hours, sure, but they’re  _subordinates._  It’s weird. It’s imbalanced. It’s wrong to get too personal, and sure, she can spar with them if she wants to but it’s not really enough. She wants to hit things with passion! There’s less passionate hitting in an employee/employer relationship. That’s just how it is.

And outside of her basically-dads and her soldiers, there’s a lot less. She’s friendly with people, neighbors, mainly, but not quite friends. She cares about the people around her and she loves teaching Shyren piano or watching Napstablook trend to their snails, and she appreciates a chance to be quiet, to be contemplative, but it’s just not enough. She always feels like she’s toning herself down so much, but she scares people off when she gets excited or physical or passionate.

She never scares Papyrus off. 

He likes fighting, he likes loud, he likes danger and excitement and he also likes spa days and listening to piano and talking about life and love and the surface and dreams and hopes and cool shit. He’s less enthusiastic about certain topics but he can never hide that he’s having fun, too, and she enjoys his sassy comments, the bizarre things he’ll say or do, and it’s just fun and free and no matter what side of herself she’s showing, she feels like Papyrus isn’t wishing she was being something else.

Well, aside from watching anime. He never wants to do that. He has some kind of weirdness against it, but, hey, that’s why she has Alphys!

~~_(That’s not the only reason she has Alphys! Gah that sounds bad. She just… Alphys is… she’s great okay? But she’s not the topic, here!)_ ~~

And with Alphys, though Undyne cares for her a lot…  _a **lot** ,_ it’s different. It’s different in a way that’s just…  _just different_ , okay!? She doesn’t need to justify it or explain it, but she can justify and explain it to Papyrus, and she does, and he tells her she’s definitely in love and that’s definitely not it, because her feelings for her are a vast ocean of deep, deep,  ** _strictly platonic_**  love. But it's… well, possible that Papyrus is right, and she considers it, because he’s smart and insightful and he doesn’t make claims like that unless he really believes them, but he’s more smug about it than wise and ageless and she doesn’t feel weird noogieing him for potentially being correct. And the noogies never stop him from trying to make smooching noises at her in retaliation, and she lets it slide because there’s nothing funnier than the sounds a guy without lips makes when he’s trying to make exaggerated, mocking kisses to the air. It’s hilarious. Infuriating in its intent, but hilarious.

And whatever, maybe she’s in love. Maybe she’s been in love for months.

_Whatever!_

The fact that she has someone to talk to about that, someone she can see being her best man at the wedding she sometimes (platonically) fantasizes about, or more likely someone she can cry and eat ice cream with and punch each other until first blood (Papyrus might have the advantage) when the inevitable rejection happens… it’s really something special, something she wouldn’t trade for anything. Maybe not even for the girl of her dreams.

Honestly, the only thing that’s  _actually_ weird about it all is how much Papyrus talks about wanting to make a friend.  _ **A**  friend._

She’s not sure he realizes he has one, and that she’s not going anywhere.

 


End file.
